It’s been two years since that day, the day I decided to surrender my ways. I was tired of life, weighed down by the ways of this world and all the things it held. I was ready to turn away from the monster that controlled my life for five years. Two years ago I gave up that monster; drugs. It is this experience that has changed my whole life.

I remember being young; running through the yard, lost in my own world. Around me life was hard, but I would imagine I lived in a different world where everything worked just the way it was supposed to. My parents separated when I was young, which, even for me as a child, was seen for the best. I went to stay with my father every week in his house in the woods. I would walk in the woods during the fall. I would hear the leaves crunch beneath my feet, and run to the tall man that was the center of my world. For a while everything was fine. As I grew older, things began to change. My father moved around a lot and life began twisting in a way I couldn’t handle. I remember sitting on the old green porch on one hot summer day, waiting for his arrival. I sat on the porch for hours, just waiting till the sun fell behind the houses and the trees, when I realized the center of my world wasn’t coming. My father came and went in my life until I was eleven years of age. That’s when finally I lost him for the last time. With just my mother, I tried to continue on through life as if things were always this way, bearing the thoughts of my childhood.

I entered sixth grade. Sitting in class one day, I looked down at my paper, and suddenly the feeling came again. It crushed me and I was overcome with this feeling. I couldn’t breathe, I felt sick, and nervousness swallowed me up. I looked around, feeling as though I was in a dream. Everything blurred, and I had to try hard to swallow. “What was I thinking about?” I wondered. The memories had faded away. I tried to understand what was going on, why this feeling would continue to pop in my life whenever it pleased? I told my mother about the feeling that continuously haunted me. We went to the doctor, who prescribed me the prescription drug Klonopin. I looked at the tiny pill, examining it in my hand, wondering how this would take away my unwelcome feeling. I swallowed the tiny pill and waited for the nervousness, which followed me through life like a shadow, to leave. Then I slowly breathed out. I felt as though a weight had literally been lifted from my chest and I could now breath again. For the first time in a year I felt relief. I felt light and free. Nothing else in the world mattered. I enjoyed the feeling so much – finally being able to relax and not care about what others thought about me, or have a constant fear of what was wrong. Before long I was taking more than the prescribed dose of this magical medicine, up to two or three at a time.

Things continued that way, and I told no one of my magical pill, but kept it to myself, taking note of how well I could hide it from the world. By the following year I was taking several of the pills a day and running out of them early in the month. I had moved to a different school that year where no one knew me. I had confidence radiating from me that everyone found to be a natural trait when really my little helper was the cause of it all. Soon after my seventh grade year began, I discovered other pills. I began to sell and trade my little helpers for others, and I expanded to bigger and better things, never missing my chance to have help to get through each and every day.

Years passed and I was having the time of my life. Now in high school, I found new friends and threw the old away. With new friends came new pills and drugs to take the throne of my heart. I couldn’t wait to swallow that next pill and let the feeling absorb into my body. At that moment everyone and everything else was gone and I never had to face reality and deal with the problems of life, and, frankly, I didn’t care. After my first year of high school, my family moved out of our house and from then on we lived with different family members. I ignored the new problems in my life, acting as if nothing bad had happened. I blocked out the fact that we no longer had a home. Then came the day that my mother went away to get help for her problems. It was just past my birthday when she left. I was staying with my grandmother at the time. She asked to hold on to my medication, which I had already taken all of. It was then that I started to realize I had a problem.
On February 25th, I made the decision that I was going to stop doing drugs. I thought it would be an easy process because I truly didn’t allow myself to think I had a real problem. As time passed, things were still hard. I felt weighed down, so naturally it was hard to resist going back to the people and the drugs. Even when my mother returned and we were in a stable home, I struggled and fell, but I moved forward. Finally I discovered Narcotics Anonymous where I talked with people and realized that there was another way. I followed the program of Narcotics Anonymous through my first year being clean. I did the twelve steps in that year and sponsored others in the program. Things were going well, certainly better than before, but there was still something missing.
I felt I was being pulled in a different direction, that there was something I needed in my life and I just couldn’t see what it could be. I was a different person now. I changed many things in my life and became a calmer person who respected others and myself, but I still struggled with the way I was. One day I walked by the dusty bookshelf in the far corner of my computer room. I allowed my hands to fall and touch the corner of the shelf and inched my way down until I was level with the low shelf. A blue book stood out to me and I took it off the shelf looking at it from front to back, the front being entitled The Recovery Bible. I held the book in my hands, nervous to even open something I had been so opposed to for years. I pushed my fears to the back of my mind and ran to my room with the book in hand. Slowly I opened the Bible, hearing each thin page crinkle as I did, and I began to read. Suddenly I was open to the thought of God, like what was happening had been His plan through this whole experience. That night I prayed from the heart, something I hadn’t done since I was young, and told God that if he was out there to please show me. I told him that I would wait for him and from there I fell asleep. For six months I read my Bible every night and prayed for the troubles in my life, I told no one what I was doing, not even my family. As time went on I continued to pray and every day I would see the things that I prayed for were happening all around me. Finally I told my mother what I had been doing the last six months, and we began to go to church. My relationship with God grew quickly. God wasn’t about a religion like I had always thought it was; instead it was about a relationship with my true Father, God.